The dispute between the BMW M235i and the Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG will seemingly go on forever. Despite the two not being perfect adversaries for each other, some publications still compare them as if they were in the same segment.
Well, sorry to break Autocar’s bubble, but they are not. If anything, the BMW M235i should’ve been compared to the CLA45 AMG but not even then the contest wouldn’t have been fair. Here’s why.
First of all, the Bimmer is a Coupe, not a hatchback like the A45 AMG. The hatch from BMW that could go up against the Merc is the M135i but here intervenes our second argument: none of them is a true M car.
Whereas the Mercs are truly AMG vehicles, tuned and prepared by the Affalterbach specialized team, the Bimmers are just M Performance Automobiles. That being said, they are not full-on M cars but rather slightly improved versions of the stock models.
That’s why these two cars shouldn’t be thrown at each other like this and then compared. Even so, Steve Sutcliffe decided that they can and he did. He took them to a track and started hooning them around to see which is best.
However, his biased opinion ruined everything. He starts off with the Mercedes and says he’s impressed by it but the understeer ruins the feeling and that the 4-cylinder engine doesn’t sound all that good.
Then, he jumps into the BMW and, from the beginning, starts saying it’s basically better in every way than the Merc. It’s more fun, it comes with a manual gearbox, the engine sounds and pulls very nicely and the seats are just about the same. Actually, the only thing he complained about is that the suspension could’ve been a bit harder, something we also discovered in our review.
After all that praise, he somehow ends up disliking the car but doesn’t really point out why, leaving us to wonder. Even so, by the end of the video, half of the point he came out here to prove is gone. If, in the beginning the aim was to see which is fastest and more fun, by the end, only the time recorded on the track matters...
The result is impressive not only because of the times recorded but also because the two are so different. Check it out and let us know what you think
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